


Vanity and Vexation of Spirit

by Ywain Penbrydd (penbrydd)



Series: Vexation of Spirit [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), The Lone Gunmen (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Frottage, M/M, Why do I do this to myself, desire in fits and starts like that old chevette that doesn't do hills any more, half a casefic, i have no excuse for any of this, nerds in lust, shitty television depictions of hacking, that feeling when your best friends are assholes, too many punchlines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-19 06:31:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14868543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penbrydd/pseuds/Ywain%20Penbrydd
Summary: Even the Office of Unsurpassed Excellence needs an extra pair of hands, every once in a while, and who better than someone who handled the weirdest shit the Bureau had to offer, before he ... 'died'. Reid goes to babysit for the duration of the assignment. Mayhem ensues.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Let it be said that I meant to write smut, and then half a casefic happened. A few points:
> 
> 1) I'm not ignoring Jump the Shark, but consider this a fix-it of sorts because fuck that shit, tbf. (I'm assuming that's set sometime in the spring of 2002.) I also _am_ pretty much ignoring everything after Season 9 of the X-Files.
> 
> 2) ~~Langly was born somewhere between 1965 and 1969, depending on what you're looking at. I picked 1968, here, based on Frohike's '32-year-old virgin' line, which appears to have happened in 2000.~~ Canon confirms October 13, 1968. Hi, I'm a space case.
> 
> 3) At the time of this writing, it is presently mid-2018. This fic is set somewhere in the near future, but before October, as Reid says he's 37. Obviously, if you're reading this after next season starts, all kinds of shit will be blatantly weird. I can only hope the weird is ... somewhat less blatant before then.
> 
> 4) I've dicked around with the first like... 8k of this so much, I probably broke something. If you spot a typo or me being dumb, please be kind, but do let me know.
> 
> 5) I shouldn't have to say it, but... 'don't like; don't read'. We're all adults here. I'm sure you know where the back button is.
> 
> ~~6) I shit up entirely and both of them are a year older than they should be. OH WELL, CLOSE ENOUGH~~

"I can do this," Garcia assured herself and the people behind her, as she looked up from her screens and turned her chair around to smile at JJ and Reid. "I just need an extra set of hands, and you're going to get him for me."  
  
"You already have someone in mind?" JJ asked, grateful and not entirely surprised. Garcia usually did her own research before asking for anything.  
  
"Ringo." Garcia fluttered her fingers and grinned. "You don't even have to bring him to me. Just bring him the box and the phone, and I'll do the rest."  
  
"The... Beatle?" Reid cocked his head, entirely confounded.  
  
"No, the hacker." Garcia laughed and turned back to her screens, pulling up a file and a photo of a pasty-faced blond, with unflattering glasses and long hair. "He's done work for the Bureau before, but nobody's wanted to use him since Agent Spooky stepped off the weirdo-files around the turn of the century. Interestingly, that might be because they think he's dead. Which he's not. But, Spooky did a very good job hiding him."  
  
"Does somebody want to put that in English, please?" JJ looked just as confused as Reid had, moments before.  
  
"She's talking about Special Agent Mulder. He was originally B.A.U., but he wound up assigned to clean up some of the Bureau's unsolved cases. Rumour has it they were originally filed under 'U' for 'Unsolved', but ended up getting filed in the cabinet for 'X', when they ran out of room in 'U'. Entirely apocryphal, but it's the tale they tell. Rumour also has it that the cases finally drove Mulder to a psychotic break, and he was forced into retirement, along with his partner. It's a shame; I heard they were really a good team. I haven't been able to get a look at any of their cases, though. Everything they worked on is way above my clearance, which is a little strange."  
  
"Yeah, Spooky Mulder was the master of the weird solve. I might have sneaked a look, and it's no wonder they said he had a break. It's straight out of a science fiction novel. But, the way he lays it out... assuming the evidence is what he says it is -- and there's usually enough third-party reports backing it up -- in the cases I peeked at, his conclusions _are_ in keeping with the evidence. It's ... not pretty." Garcia glanced over her shoulder and grimaced. "But, this job so rarely is, which is why I surround myself with adorable wonders of the modern world." She picked up a small rubber unicorn and squeaked it at Reid.  
  
Reid blinked, uncertainty pressing at his features. "It's very sparkly, considering it's made of rubber. But, you were telling us about Ringo."  
  
"Ringo, my dearies, is a conspiracy theorist extraordinaire. And if Agent Spooky's records are accurate, he holds up well against a good challenge. His skills might, _might_ , be in range of Yours Truly, but he doesn't have the ease of access we do, here, so it's a little hard to judge." Garcia waggled a hand, unwilling to pass that judgement solidly, and then picked up a small black box and a cel phone, from the edge of her desk and offered them to Reid. "You bring him the box and you tell him The Black Queen has a job for him."  
  
JJ inhaled sharply. "You really want to do that?"  
  
"He'll trust the Queen. What he won't trust is some random technical analyst from a department he's never worked with. And, of course, I _am_ me, so I can answer any questions he has to prove it."  
  
Reid took the equipment and squinted at the screen. "He's a lot older than you, Garcia. Are you sure he'll know who you are?"  
  
Garcia's lips tightened and she picked up three cups before she found her coffee. "He'll remember me."  
  
"Oh. You--" JJ's eyes widened and she gestured vaguely.  
  
"Trust me." Garcia made shooing motions with both hands. "It's me. When am I wrong?"  
  
Reid opened his mouth, and lifted a finger.  
  
Garcia tipped her chin forward, staring all the more intently at him.  
  
His mouth closed.  
  
"And Spencer, my darling, my dear... you know we can't leave him working independently." Garcia fluttered her eyelashes and smiled a little too wide.  
  
"So, we babysit him." JJ nodded. "Seems reasonable."  
  
"No, _he_ babysits him." Garcia pointed to Reid. "It's nothing personal, JJ, you know I love you, and that is why I am not going to put you in that room. According to the records, Ringo lived with two or three other guys, back in the day -- probably still does -- and at least one of them rates about a negative three on the social skills scale. I don't want that going on in the background while we're trying to work."  
  
"So, you're sending Reid in by himself? That doesn't sound smart at all." JJ folded her arms.  
  
"Reid is distinctly lacking in the jiggly-bouncy department," Garcia pointed out. "Sorry, Spencer, but you are. That booty does not bounce, and in this case, that's an asset. An ass-set. I'm just gonna back away from that, now. You're not a woman, you'll be fine."  
  
"How bad are these guys?" JJ asked, wondering if they wouldn't be better off just arresting them for harassment.  
  
"Just mouthy. It's not that I think you can't handle yourself, I just don't need the distractions. I don't need us to have to pause in the middle of this because you duct-taped somebody to a chair for your own continued mental health."  
  
"I'm waiting in the car, Spence." JJ looked sternly at Reid. "With a gun."  
  
"Of course you'd have a gun. You shouldn't be in the field without one." Reid's lips tugged up at the corners, suggesting the smile he was trying to hide. "You're aware that I am a fully-trained field agent, right? Not a damsel walking into a dragon's den?"  
  
"Reid, you have this... way of just... things _happen_ to you at a really inordinate rate," JJ argued, lips twisting in concern.  
  
"Hey, at least one of those times, things happened to both of us. Things also happened to Morgan, to Hotch, to Prentiss... We're FBI agents, JJ. Things happen to us. It's in our best interests to plan ahead so as few of those things as possible actually come to pass, and right now, that is what Garcia's trying to do. I'm the token male in the office, right now, because everyone else is actually in the field. And it's up to us to bring them home safe, right?" Reid curled his shoulders in, seeming to shrink until he could look JJ in the eye. "So all we have to do is not distract Garcia's support. I'll be fine. Stay here and coordinate. I promise I'll check in regularly, and if I don't answer the phone, you can send in the locals, okay?"  
  
"I don't like this." JJ jabbed a finger at Reid, before sighing and giving up.  
  
"He's going to be fine, JJ. There's nothing dangerous about what he's doing or where he's going," Garcia promised. "Might still want to take the extra-large bottle of hand sanitizer, though."


	2. Chapter 2

Reid pressed the buzzer and looked up at the camera mounted above the door. Cautious people lived here, and he reflexively checked the door and the surrounding wall for hatches and gun ports, but found only what appeared to be a well-mounted mailbox.  
  
"Who the hell are you?" the speaker below the camera squawked.  
  
Reid looked up and addressed the camera. "I'm an agent of The Black Queen. I've come to do business with Ringo."  
  
"The Black Queen sent _you_?" A different voice this time.  
  
"She did. I've come to negotiate a short-term contract for something I won't discuss while standing on the street. I'm here to do business with Ringo, and he's the one I'll speak with. In person." Reid hoped he'd judged these 'Lone Gunmen' properly.  
  
A few minutes of silence followed, and Reid stayed put. Finally, the door opened to reveal another door behind it, and a bearded, brown-haired man in the gap.  
  
"So, you want to talk to me?"  
  
"No, Mr. Byers," Reid hoped he was correct. The man had aged from the photos in the file, but it was extremely likely to be the same man. "I'm here for Ringo, not you."  
  
"You noticed." Byers nearly smiled, as he waved Reid in. "Come in. Are you armed? We'll know in a moment."  
  
"I am. One doesn't walk into a meeting with unknown participants, in the middle of the warehouse district, unarmed." Reid entered, but made no move to divest himself of anything, and the door slid shut behind him. He hoped he had signal, in here, because Garcia had been listening since he parked the car. "I'm going to ask that you not EM pulse me. I'm carrying a gift that would not fare well."  
  
"And your own communications equipment." It wasn't a question.  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Smart and honest. Hard to come by." Byers pushed a button next to the inner door. "What do you have?"  
  
"Exactly what he says," the second voice from outside replied. "Just let him in, Byers. And don't let him touch anything."  
  
"You scanned me." Reid acknowledged it with a nod. "And what if I hadn't been as friendly as I looked?"  
  
"I'd be fine," Byers assured him, as the door slid open. "You might not be."  
  
"Please no corpses, Byers, you know I cannot with the corpses." A lanky man almost as tall as Reid unfolded himself from behind a half-wall of monitors, set high, that split the room in half, absently brushing long blond hair away from his face.  
  
"There are very rarely corpses, and they're never my fault," Byers assured Reid. He made no introductions.  
  
"Ringo," Reid deduced. "You look just like the photos."  
  
"Why exactly does The Black Queen have photos of me?" The blond man's eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward, folding his arms across the top of a monitor that played splashes of colour across the shoulders of his t-shirt.  
  
"From Spooky Mulder's FBI files. She's good. When she wants information, she gets it." Reid reminded himself to keep breathing steadily. He was telling the truth. The implications, on the other hand...  
  
"So, she's back. For real, this time? Not like that little proto-blip a few years ago?" Ringo asked, still looking unconvinced.  
  
"Look, you can ask her. I'm going to reach into my right pocket and take out two items she said to give to you. One is a phone. The other is ... I actually don't know what it is. She said you'd know what to do with it, if you took the job." Reid moved slowly, just one arm, as he fished out the two items in his blazer pocket and held them out.  
  
Byers looked back and forth between the two of them, before walking toward the back of the room, without trying to take the items from Reid. "I'm going to go get a coffee. Scream if you need anything."  
  
Ringo huffed and came down from his massive desk, almost as impressive as Garcia's, if less obviously decorated from this side. "Ringo? She actually called me Ringo?"  
  
"I can address you as Mr. Langly, if you prefer, but yes. She told me I was to speak with 'Ringo'." Reid let go of the box and the phone as Ringo's hand closed on them.  
  
The phone rang as soon as he touched it. Garcia's technological magic, once again.  
  
Ringo rolled his eyes and switched the phone to his other hand, swiping a finger across it, as he brought it up to his ear. "Langly."  
  
A distortion of Garcia's voice poured out of the phone as she remotely activated the speakerphone. "I have an offer for you, my prince. Congratulations on your coronation and bloodying up Orange, yet again."  
  
Ringo paled, eyes darting to the backs of the monitors.  
  
"I need your hands. It's a dirty job, and you're the only one who can keep up with me," Garcia went on.  
  
"How long have you been watching?" Ringo asked, looking down at the box in his other hand. "And why don't I know about it?"  
  
"Long enough. You've been looking in the wrong place." Garcia laughed, somehow much more sinister through the filter. "I've learned a few things, since the last time we danced."  
  
Reid stayed still, relaxing his face, letting his eyes take in everything out to the edges of his periphery. Cameras, still. Less obvious, but there. Impossible to tell where they were aimed, but the positions suggested this half of the room. Byers probably hadn't gone for coffee. He'd gone to whatever room the security feeds went to. Smart man, really. But, they'd obviously been doing this a very long time.  
  
"And the deal is ... what, I work for you, and you don't use anything you might have discovered? Which is ... that I play too many video games on a very large screen?" Ringo sighed and rubbed his eye with the back of the hand that held the box, knocking his glasses askew.  
  
"No, you'll be paid. And my assistant will pay for anything you need to stay awake, if it's out of your budget," Garcia assured him. "He stays with you, while you work for me. Just to make sure everything goes smoothly."  
  
"You sent him here in person. Isn't that...?"  
  
"Tactless? You know what a blunt instrument I can be. He can take care of himself _and_ you. I need someone there to make sure nothing happens before we're done. It's dangerous, Ringo. Lives are at stake."  
  
"What the hell are you getting me into? And don't call me Ringo. Nobody's called me that in years."   
  
"You'd prefer 'Manhammer'?"  
  
"Langly's fine." Langly looked like he was debating throwing the phone and throwing Reid out.  
  
"Thirty seven people and a hostage situation." Any humour left in Garcia's voice left it. "I need you to mangle the security in the building and keep it glitch-free, while I handle the explosives tied into the wiring for the electronic locks and elevators. You keep me invisible, I handle the rest."  
  
"Holy shit, Your Majesty. You don't fuck around, do you?" Langly paused. "How do I know you're for real? This... One, this sounds like a cop thing and two, _that_ stinks of a setup."  
  
"Ask me something only I should know. And make it quick, Ri-- _Langly_."  
  
"When's the last time you're sure I talked to you?"  
  
Garcia answered with no hesitation. "February ninth, oh-two. Vizi's Disco, on the five-five-nine, not the seven-two-four. White and Vanity were there."  
  
"Who was your partner on Conjugations of Diana?" Langly shot back.  
  
"You never knew that, and I'm not telling you, now."  
  
"Yeah, that's you. Why are you doing cop shit?" Langly went to rub his eye again and clipped himself across the nose with the box.  
  
"Does it matter, Langly? There are thirty-seven people and a wall of bombs and at least three more people with guns. That is forty people and maybe they're all going to die, if you don't get off your ass. Now stop worrying about _feds_ and help me make people not die!"  
  
Langly looked at Reid, who mouthed the word 'corpses' and nodded.  
  
"Fine. We're doing this. Tell me what to do with the box."


	3. Chapter 3

Six hours and three cans of Jolt later, Reid crouched like a frog on a folding chair much too short for him, watching the security video on a monitor next to where Langly's hands moved ceaselessly across the keys, Garcia occasionally barking instructions from the phone parked in a charging cradle behind the keyboard.  
  
"Third, box two, number three," Reid reported as the lights shifted on one of the video feeds.  
  
"Optimism is a mania for maintaining all is going well, when things are going badly," Langly muttered, winging an empty can of Jolt across the room, as the lights Reid was watching stabilised.  
  
Reid opened another can and set it next to Langly's keyboard. "Candide."  
  
"Things are going just fine. It's just taking a little longer than expected because these guys actually know what they're doing, which I was not expecting. I mean, obviously, they were good enough I needed more hands, but this is ... I want to know who's working for them, because if I know this guy I'm going to punch him right in his stupid nose." Garcia sounded less than entirely enthused with the course of the day, thus far, despite her insistence otherwise. "Oh, no."  
  
"What?" Langly demanded, squinting at one window and typing in another.  
  
"Nothing! Nothing. I got this. It's just going to be quiet for a minute, while I..." Garcia trailed off. "Just keep doing what you're doing over there."  
  
Langly took one hand off the keyboard, pressing his palm against his eye, before he straightened his glasses and kept going. "So... you read Voltaire?"  
  
"Among other things. Candide stuck with me, though." Reid shifted in his seat and opened a can of Jolt for himself. "Fourth, box one, number six."  
  
"Practicality before optimism?" Langly asked, taking a swig of Jolt with one hand, as the other hit enter, with both hands back in place by the time the command had finished. "There is no justification for evil, but man will the idiots try?"  
  
"The dangers of flawed reasoning," Reid replied, standing up to stretch, eyes still on the screen. "Correlation does not equal causation."  
  
"The nose is formed in the shape of spectacles, and so on," Langly muttered, intent on his work.  
  
"Exactly!" Reid picked up his drink and stepped back onto the chair, lowering himself carefully down. "Third, box two, number one."  
  
"Number _one_?" Langly's eyes lit up behind the reflected text scrolling up his glasses. "I get it. I know exactly what's going on, here. I know this sequence." He read off the numbers from the preceding ten minutes.  
  
"Are you crazy?" Garcia's voice cut back in. "It is not Vanity. Vanity's... Vanity's a fed."  
  
"That means exactly shit, and you know it," Langly retorted. "And I didn't say it was Vanity, _you_ said it was Vanity. I just gave you the sequence. It's Vanity's signature, but that doesn't mean it's Vanity. Which you also know. It could be one of Vanity's acolytes, fans, somebody with a grudge. I haven't seen Vanity in almost as long as I haven't seen you. Which... makes sense if the feds bit. That why you disappeared?"  
  
"Something like that, not that you were there," Garcia replied. "I really hope it's not Vanity. Vanity doesn't even make sense here."  
  
"Never violent like this. Vanity was after information, not people." The speed of Langly's typing slowed and Reid couldn't spot any blips. "Got it. Just gotta make sure I clean up after anything new..."  
  
"If there's something new, we're going to be spotted," Garcia muttered, absorbed in her own work. "We're in too far. If somebody flips a switch now, and we turn it off, nobody's going to think they forgot to do it earlier."  
  
"Do you want help?" Langly asked. "Make it go faster?"  
  
"Absolutely not. I need you to keep them off me, if they do get in after us."  
  
Langly watched Reid's screens instead of his own, for a moment. "What is this place?"  
  
"Document storage vault for--" Reid started, but Langly cut him off.  
  
"It's not about the people. The people are to keep anyone from looking at the data." Langly grabbed the can of Jolt and took a nervous swig. "Then why the hell is the building still standing?"  
  
"Because the data is a cover for the data," Reid replied, after a moment.  
  
"No, no, no, no. Don't tell me this," Garcia sang out from the phone, over the muffled clack of her own keyboard. "I cannot think about this right now. There are thirty-seven people and bombs, and I am going to take care of that, and then we can talk about this!"  
  
Langly pulled up another window, a text editor, and nudged Reid. ' _The data is a cover...?_ '  
  
Reid nodded emphatically, grabbed a stack of proofs, and flipped them over to write on the back -- his writing relatively legible, even as he kept his eyes on his own screen. ' _Assuming this person is going to destroy the data, but hasn't, there are two things to look at. They've set up a hostage crisis no one -- including their insiders -- is going to survive. It guarantees the eyes are going to be on the people, not on the documents, which will be severely damaged by that kind of impact. The cabinets are all fireproof and waterproof, but they may not be blast-proof. They're trying to steal something and cover it up by blowing up half the building, which will probably take out almost all of it, the way those are spaced._ ' He shoved the page across the desk.  
  
Langly glanced at it and nodded, eyes tuned from hours of reading the scrolling text on the screen to pick up the most meaning in the least time. "Shit." He switched windows and his hands flew across the keyboard again.  
  
"What?" Garcia asked.  
  
"Logs just pulled out from under me. You're fine. We're invisible." Langly closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, a single character on the screen had changed. "And we're back. But, if your boy's right, we're almost out of time."  
  
"I know. I know." Garcia sounded tense, even through the filter. "Coming in or going out?"  
  
"Coming in," Reid said, pointing at one of the cameras. "And we're the only ones who can see it."  
  
"Not any more!" Garcia announced. "I just pushed our copy of that feed to the lobby. It's a cop problem now."  
  
"Tell them about the detonator," Langly reminded her. "Whoever that is has to be carrying something that'll set it all off."  
  
"No timer?" Reid asked, after a moment.  
  
"No timer," Garcia confirmed. "So, they're not sure when they're going to get out. Trying to keep it open ended... I think I got the elevators. Don't anyone start one. That stuff's still in there, and I don't actually know what it is, so we don't want to hit it with anything. It's gonna be real obvious I got those, though, if anyone looks in here. Had to disable the whole circuit for each one. I was trying not to do that, but..."  
  
"We can't kill power to the building without setting it off, so killing power to the circuit's ..." Reid paused. "Well, nothing's exploding."  
  
"Didn't expect anyone to get this far in." Garcia muttered. "The doors are going to be tricky. If I cut the circuit, you can't open them. If I don't cut the circuit, they might blow up. If I cut the circuit and they try to ram them, they might blow up. If they don't ram them, people are going to get shot as soon as someone realises the doors don't open, and the building's not blowing up."  
  
"Nobody on the inside knows the building's blowing up," Reid reminded her. "The bombs are just supposed to keep anyone from coming in after them, before they negotiate a settlement. Whatever it is they want, anyway. What do they think they want? Do we know? Did anyone tell us?"  
  
"Nobody told us. We don't need to know." Garcia huffed. "Have to get the doors..."  
  
"Get the doors and then tell them to go up the elevator shafts. The elevator doors on the floors aren't rigged, right? It's just the cars?"  
  
"You are a genius!" The somewhat distorted sound of Garcia blowing a kiss followed.  
  
"That's me," Reid agreed, the smile audible in his voice.  
  
"And I'm just a pair of hands," Langly muttered, chasing Garcia's trail in one window and watching for signs of intrusion in another.  
  
"Ringo, you're the best pair of hands I could've borrowed for this," Garcia assured him. "Okay. Doors. Busy."  
  
The phone fell silent, but for the sound of typing.  
  
Langly reached out and hit mute. "So, where'd she pick you up? Yard sale for discount grad students?"  
  
"If she had, she'd have gotten a great deal. I've got three Ph.D.s." Reid smiled slyly, watching their thief climb out of an air vent. "Fourth floor. Four is one of those floors where most things don't have digital copies."  
  
"Security through obscurity," Langly grumbled. "Three Ph.D.s, huh? And you're what, twenty?"  
  
"Thirty-seven." Reid shrugged. "I'm often told I look younger, possibly because I don't grow a beard."  
  
"They say the same thing about me. I don't know. The beard didn't help Byers." Langly snorted, still typing, intermittently.  
  
"Well, you definitely don't look fifty."  
  
"Who the hell said I was fifty?" Langly squawked.  
  
"I read your file. Eidetic memory." Reid tucked his hair behind his ear and took a sip of Jolt, just to have something to do with his hands. "This stuff tastes awful."  
  
"Well, you don't exactly drink it for the _flavour_. You stop noticing it around the fifth can." Langly reflexively picked up his own drink and swigged it. "Could be worse. Could be Afri-Cola."  
  
"Could be better. Could be _coffee_." Reid leaned over and tapped the mute button again. "The thief's going through the files in four-thirteen. Do we know what's in there?"  
  
"Not right now, Reid." Garcia's voice remained tense. "Almost got this. We'll have a look when people aren't going to blow up, right?"  
  
"Sorry," Reid muttered and hit mute again.  
  
"'Reid', huh? So, you do have a name." Langly winged the empty can across the room, again.  
  
"And yet, I'm not the one who told you what it was." Reid leaned in close, as if trying to read the folder names on the security footage. "But, you never asked."  
  
"That's fair." Langly stretched a leg under the desk and rubbed his thigh. "So, how'd she find me? I'm ... dead. Buried in Arlington National Cemetery."  
  
"That's in the file, but not this address." Reid smiled absently. "But, you never gave up publishing. You just moved online and took your names off things. 'Vexation of Spirit: in memory of the Lone Gunmen'. I got the whole story on the drive down. The point is The Black Queen has more resources and a better system at her disposal than pretty much anyone. Probably you, too, not that I have the background to judge. But, she did find you, which is suggestive."  
  
"She was some script-kiddie, when we met. I guess she got better." Langly watched his own screen and Reid's, a few seconds at a time.  
  
"It's been almost fifteen years. I'd like to think we've all gotten better." Reid shrugged, his nose nearly touching the screen as he squinted at the tiny text in the low-resolution video.  
  
" _Optimism_ ," Langly scoffed.  
  
Reid suddenly leaned back from the screen. "Thief's moving."  
  
Garcia's voice cut in. "Got the doors. Lock them out, Ringo."  
  
"I just said not to call me that," Langly muttered, before unsetting mute. "All cued and ready to go. And... Bingo. There is no one in the system except you and me."  
  
"The cavalry has been summoned, and they should be on camera shortly." The typing from the other end of the phone stopped. "And, elevator doors on five ... now!"  
  
The sound of one key being struck with some force came through to them, and Langly separated out the cameras from the fifth floor onto their own monitor, as the doors opened, he and Reid watching black-clad figures in FBI vests climb out of an elevator shaft.  
  
"Feds," Langly scoffed, stretching, though it did nothing to alleviate the air of tension that clung to his body as he watched the quick gunplay on the screen. "So, Vanity's a fed, and you know it, but you're doing fed jobs, what, on the side? If Vanity's turned, why isn't Vanity doing this one?"  
  
"Because why take second best?" Garcia sounded distracted, and the sound of typing picked up again. "And you're one to talk."  
  
"Thief on four's headed back out," Reid noted, eyes on the other screen. "I think we have about three minutes before they're going to try the detonator."  
  
"Well, whoever that is, they're going to be sorely disappointed," Garcia muttered. "I think we have all the lower access to that air shaft accounted for, and there's no way to get back up. Only down. We've got them."  
  
Langly's hands started to tremble as the bomb techs removed the explosives from an emergency exit door. He and Reid watched two separate screens, Reid waiting for the thief to surface, Langly waiting for the hostages to reach the ground floor.  
  
Reid suddenly grabbed the keyboard, poking at it futilely for a moment. "Get me the blueprints. Something's wrong. We missed an exit."  
  
Langly batted his hands away and pulled up one of the files he'd been sent. "Here, look. The only way out of the air system's through the vents, right? And she says they've got the guys in position -- you can see them."  
  
"Except the one we can't see, because it's not in the building." Reid tapped on a smaller channel that led out into a maintenance tunnel that served every building on the street.  
  
"Nobody could fit through that!" Langly argued, checking the measurements.  
  
"No, you and I couldn't fit through that, just like we couldn't fit through the rest of it. But, someone a great deal smaller than us could fit through _all of it_." Reid's eyes flicked to the screen with the most cameras. The hostages were in the stairs, slowly being brought down, one level at a time. "Get me the images from four?"  
  
Langly pulled them up. "Well, that's definitely not a midget."  
  
"No, but that's a standard four-drawer file cabinet. You're taller. I'm taller. That person isn't. And they're not very wide, either. We're not looking at a midget, but that person isn't particularly large, and I'm willing to bet they're small enough to take that vent with room to spare." Reid raised his voice, for Garcia. "Get someone into the tunnels! Get a camera in the tunnels! We need eyes!"  
  
"Already got it, started as soon as you mentioned it." Garcia pushed the feed to them. "It's too late."  
  
The screen picked up the image of the round vent cover propped against the far wall, lit by the dim light mounted beside the vent for maintenance. Above the discarded metal, a rough sketch of an eye, in black.  
  
Langly's eyes dared back to the cameras following the hostages down the stairs. "Detonation any second."  
  
"It's not going to go off," Reid reminded him.  
  
"You know, I'll believe that when everyone walks out the door alive," Langly snapped, shoving his hair back and pulling his legs back from where he'd stretched them. "Two more floors."  
  
They watched in silence, until the last of the hostages had been led out the glass doors in the lobby.  
  
"Success!" Langly cheered, leaping to his feet and throwing an arm around Reid, who still perched awkwardly beside him. "Victory for the good guys!"  
  
Langly's arm tightened, pulling Reid toward him for what might have been a victory kiss on the cheek. But, Reid turned his head at the movement and took it full on the lips, pressing himself against Langly as the folding chair collapsed under him, trapping one leg and knocking them both to the ground.  
  
"Everything all right over there?" Garcia asked.  
  
"I'm fine!" Reid called out, from where he lay on top of Langly, trying to figure out what, exactly, had just happened and what he was supposed to do about it.  
  
"Folding chair!" Langly clarified, as soon as he could draw breath. "Treacherous death traps. I never sit in them."  
  
Reid lay as still as he could, as he fumbled with the folding chair still closed around his leg. One hand was all he should need, but the chair would not be so easily defeated.  
  
"Not that I object to being dragged to the floor by handsome young men intent on writhing against my crotch, but you want to get off me? You're all elbows, and elbows are not going to get that chair off you. They might puncture my spleen, though."  
  
"Your spleen's on the other side," Reid grumbled, before attempting to remove himself from Langly, without breaking anything. "Genius defeated by folding chair, story at ten."  
  
"Do I need to send the fire department, my dears?" Garcia laughed.  
  
"Nah, I got this." Langly pushed himself back and sat up. "I promise not to send him home in more pieces than he got here."  
  
"I'm going to hold you to that."  
  
"I'll be fine," Reid insisted, still attempting to grapple with the chair.  
  
"I might leave him like this for a bit. It's pretty funny," Langly joked. "You want pictures?"  
  
"No," Reid commanded, at the same time Garcia said, "Yes!"  
  
"There are times an intrepid reporter must ask himself: do the people really need to know?" Langly winked at Reid, as he leaned over him, approaching the chair with both hands and a much better angle. "Sorry, Your Majesty, not this time. But, if he does it again, this treaty is null and void."  
  
"Thanks, I think." Reid tried not to breathe too deeply, his face inches from Langly's jeans-clad crotch, as the man finally freed him from the chair.  
  
"Do you mind if I hold on to your assistant for a little while? Something about this thief is really up my ass, and he's got good eyes." Langly folded back onto his knees, as Reid finally managed to sit up, brushing the crud from the floor off himself. Maybe it was time to sweep in here.  
  
"Is that something you want to do, my lovely assistant?" Garcia asked. "Far be it from me to thrust you into something unpaid and potentially dangerous, in the hands of a hacker of questionable virtue."  
  
"My virtues are not questionable," Langly argued. "They're just limited."  
  
Reid cleared his throat to cover a laugh. "I'm pretty sure I'm not in danger from anything but the furniture, here. I'm definitely sure nothing's coming in the door uninvited."  
  
"Please don't piss off Frohike," Langly groaned at the contemplative pause from Garcia. "He will shit enough bricks to build a wall if you touch the locks. You can't get in, electronically. The final locks are manual only, and the electronics have a manual override. We're not getting trapped in here. I have a thing about getting stuck places."  
  
"Like the man says, I'm pretty sure we're secure, here, and after this many hours, I'm relatively sure no one here has any ill-intent." Reid cut a look at the chair. "As long as I can avoid being assaulted by any more furniture, I'm fine staying to try to find the thief. I know that's an FBI problem, now, but I think the team's got their hands full with the gunmen. I'm just not sure any of them will be willing or able to help with this."  
  
"You check in with me, Reid. I want to hear your voice." Garcia sounded entirely serious, even through the filter. "Tell me if you go to sleep, so I don't send Madame Gunship to kick down the door for no good reason."  
  
"You will see me in person sometime tomorrow. I'll come to see you before I even go home," Reid promised, trying to shift himself so he made as little contact with the floor as possible. "Call me any time you want to hear my voice, and I'll pick up."  
  
"Good enough," Garcia decided. "You send him back to me, Ringo, or they will never find all the pieces of your body or your hardware."  
  
"Hey, I am the least dangerous thing here. The folding chairs are deadly. The coffee maker has a vendetta. I've got a keyboard and a case of Jolt, and I'd be hard-pressed to go into battle with either one." Langly considered that. "Well, the kind of battle you'd be concerned about happening near your 'lovely assistant', anyway."  
  
"Then be well, my lovelies! This is The Black Queen signing off." The call timer on the phone stopped counting up, and after a moment, the screen turned off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOW WITH ILLUSTRATION from the illustrious [MaverikLoki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaverikLoki/pseuds/MaverikLoki), my partner in crimes against the English language in another fandom!  
> [](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/294048926196039692/471842500714430474/rangly_smooch.jpg)


	4. Chapter 4

"So, do you actually want my help with the thief, or is this just an excuse to convince me to 'writhe against your crotch' some more?" Reid asked, rising to his feet with surprising grace, before he bent to dust off more of his clothing. "Because I'm going to have to object to anything that puts me in close contact with that floor, again."  
  
Langly snorted and stood up. "Sorry. I'll get you a real chair. It's just... I don't know you, and..."  
  
"You didn't want me getting too comfortable," Reid filled in. "Perfectly reasonable, under the circumstances. A seat, so you couldn't be said to be inhospitable, but one not designed to be sat upon for any length of time."  
  
"Or at all." Langly took the folding chair and descended into the depths of the building behind the desk, calling into the darkness, "Can I get some lights please? And any time the two of you want to stop cowering like roaches in a bomb shelter and go back to your actual lives, it's fine with me. He's not a threat. And I've got next issue's front page."  
  
Lights kicked on, illuminating the desk on the other side of the passage between the half-walls, the rest of the parts-lined workspace that occupied the next section of the building, and a kitchen Reid could barely recognise, in the glimpse he could make out past a server rack.   
  
"Is there a bathroom?" Reid inquired, as the unfolding of his legs finally caught up with the rest of his body.  
  
"Back the way you came, on the right," Langly called back, from somewhere deeper.  
  
By the time Reid returned, no longer covered in floor-crud and smelling faintly of soap and hand sanitizer, Langly had parked a large recliner next to his own seat.  
  
"Sorry. We don't really get visitors. This one's mine, so you should fit in it. Probably more comfortable than anything else around here." Langly dropped back into his own chair and started cleaning up windows he no longer needed.  
  
"This chair seems much sturdier, thank you," Reid pointed out, as he lowered himself into it. "That said it's probably going to hurt a lot more if you flip it over trying to kiss me."  
  
"That was an accident." Langly shoved his glasses up and ground his palms against his eyes. "I got a little excited, okay. Victory kiss. I'd have done it to anyone sitting next to me right then. It was supposed to just be on the cheek, and then you fell on me, lips first."  
  
"Folding chairs." Reid nodded sagely. "Death traps."  
  
"Exactly!" Langly threw a hand out for punctuation. "I don't do dead people. Everybody walked out of that building alive, and I just lost it for a minute."  
  
Reid blinked. "I know why she wanted you for this. _That's_ it."  
  
"That is absolutely not it. What if someone got shot? I'd be barfing on my shoes. Nope. I'm just the hands she could still reach from the old days." Langly finally re-seated his glasses and reached for the can of Jolt that wasn't there. He didn't call himself the best of the best. Not any more.  
  
Reid rocked forward and slid another can across the desk. "You were her first choice. She knew what she wanted, and you were it."  
  
"Flattery," Langly scoffed, sorting through the fourth-floor footage.  
  
"Why would I be flattering you now?" Reid picked up his own half-finished Jolt and leaned back in the chair. "The job's done."  
  
"My fantastic ass." Langly took a swig and set the can aside to put both hands on the keyboard. "I don't know."  
  
"I can't say I've been paying attention to your ass. Besides, it's been in a chair." Reid took another sip and regretted it as much as the first.  
  
"Well you sure as hell grabbed it on the way down," Langly shot back, tossing a still onto the monitor in front of Reid.  
  
"Did you land on my hand? That explains why my knuckles hurt." Reid looked a little surprised, his own recollections of falling consisting mostly of the sudden realisation that he was and didn't want to be. "Sorry. First thing to hand. I was trying not to fall."  
  
"Lot of good that did." Langly squinted at another still. "I think you're right. I think whoever this is, they're really short. You don't see them next to any _people_ so it's harder, but you're right about that cabinet."  
  
"They've got no real shape, either. I'd put money on a bulletproof vest. And yet, no helmet, just a balaclava. That says there's a serious concern about being recognised, but a much lesser concern they'll actually be caught in the act. Enough to guard against chest shots, but not head shots, because you don't get shot in the head, running. You get shot in the head by snipers."  
  
"And there are no snipers because the whole building's solid after the ground floor. It's a block of concrete from B-seven to seven, except the lobby," Langly realised, pulling up the blueprints again.  
  
Reid shifted forward, the chair moving to support him, as he did. "You're right about the chair. Where'd you get this?"  
  
"It used to be a really nice chair made for someone three inches shorter. Then I took it apart and put it back together. Most of the internal hardware's mine, now." Langly glanced at Reid and grinned. "Everywhere it's got a cushion, it vibrates, too. That's original, but I gave it a battery, so it doesn't have to plug in if it's not recharging. Makes it easier to drag around, but it's also heavier. Which is why it has wheels. I dunno. I'm still working on it. It's not done, but it's the best thing you'll ever sit in. Yellow buttons on the inside of the right arm, if you don't believe me."  
  
The buttons weren't labelled, so Reid picked one at random. The chair vibrated against his lower legs. "Why is this not your desk chair?"  
  
"Because if it was, I'd never get up again." Langly laughed. "I have to put some distance between the keyboard and complete, mind-melting bliss, so I have something to look forward to in either direction. I pass through the kitchen both ways."  
  
"And you're letting me sit in it." Reid looked unconvinced.  
  
"I feel like an asshole about the folding chair, okay?" Langly huffed and shoved a few more images over. "Don't make it weird."  
  
"It's a little late for that." Reid smiled awkwardly.  
  
A voice came from behind them. "It's a lot late for it not to be weird. You're here, Langly."  
  
"Didn't ask you, Frohike." Langly huffed and turned his chair to face the man. "Good to see you've finally crawled out of your cave to see our visitor. This is--"  
  
"Supervisory Special Agent Doctor Spencer Reid, with the B.A.U." Frohike looked faintly amused. "He's a fed, Langly."  
  
Langly lost several words to an extended inhale as his shoulders lifted.  
  
"I never said I wasn't a fed. You didn't ask." Reid wondered how much trouble he was in, as he subtly turned off the vibration in the chair, and got ready to leap over the arm furthest from Langly.  
  
"No, what you said was that you came from The Black Queen." Langly jabbed a finger at him. "And whoever you got definitely talks like her."  
  
"Because it is her." Reid held up his hands, palm out. "We started with the Bureau in the same year. She wanted an opportunity to help people, and they were offering her an incredible equipment budget."  
  
"You mean she got caught," Frohike cut in.  
  
"I really don't know the whole story. I only know parts, so I don't want to say things that might not be true, later. I do know she's really The Black Queen." Reid kept his hands where they were.  
  
"The point isn't this fed. He seems harmless. The point is that someone knows who we are and where we are, and at least some of those someones are feds," Frohike pointed out. "We're not dead any more."  
  
"There's nothing in the records," Reid promised. "She found you the hard way. And I'd say if she can do it maybe you need to tighten your security, but I'm not sure there are too many people out there who have her skills _and_ her equipment." He paused. "She knows and I know. If she doesn't like how long I've been gone, maybe two other agents will know, but I'm not about to let that happen."  
  
"Yeah, but she did it with fed gear. Anything still looking for us..."  
  
"Frohike, it's been more than fifteen years. Nobody remembers us. They're all old or dead, by now." Langly shrugged. "I mean, yeah, I'll call her back and get her to tell me how she did it, so nobody else can do it, but... Who remembers? Who cares? We're not who we used to be."  
  
"I'm not dead, yet," Frohike pointed out. "And neither is anyone younger than me who didn't get shot."  
  
"Why are you two worried about the FBI? I thought you used to do contracts for us." Reid finally lowered his hands.  
  
"We're not worried about the FBI, we're worried about something much larger and more dangerous that has its greasy fingers firmly lodged up the FBI's ass," Langly told him. "That's something we're not talking about. You won't find it in the records, either. Mulder was pretty interested in not getting _murdered_."  
  
"This is the point where normally I'd nod along and make a note that you're paranoid and delusional, but delusional paranoiacs don't usually wind up having fake funerals in Arlington and getting what I'd assume was an awful lot of witness protection funding to disappear." Reid's eyebrows lifted curiously.  
  
"Misdirected DoD funds," Frohike filled in. "It's easier than you'd think, if you've ever seen their accounting."  
  
"I'd give my left asscheek to blow the lid off this, but we've never had enough information or reach to make the kind of difference that would matter. We'd just end up getting more people killed, with what we've got." Langly shrugged.  
  
"And you don't do corpses," Reid recalled.  
  
Langly turned on him, one finger stabbing at he air between them. "Listen here, Mr Special Agent Suit and Tie, not only do I not want to see corpses, I don't want to make corpses. Making corpses is -- it's --" He pressed the heel of his hand against where his nose met his forehead, catching his glasses in the motion, as he squeezed his eyes shut. "Nobody dies, okay? No. I was younger, then. A lot of people have died. As few people as possible die. Man, this is stupid. The only people who are going to die if you fucked up -- if _she_ fucked up -- are us."  
  
Frohike jumped in to bail Langly out. "But, what I actually came down here to ask, before things got all dramatic, was what you and your spicy, young federale wanted to eat. Byers and I are ordering Chinese."  
  
Langly moved his hand and his glasses dropped back into place, as his eyes narrowed in Frohike's direction. "Man, it was an _accident_! I blame the folding chair!"  
  
"I'm really not that spicy," Reid protested. "Not even in Spanish."  
  
"You know what I eat. What do I always get? But, double egg rolls." Langly continued to look faintly irritated.  
  
"Something I can eat with a fork?" An awkward smile crept across Reid's face. "Orange chicken?"  
  
"A man with three Ph.D.s can't use chopsticks?" Langly teased, eyeing Reid.  
  
"Everybody's got to be bad at something." Reid shrugged. "It took a long time to accept that."  
  
"He says to the fifty-year-old virgin," Frohike quipped.  
  
Langly looked like he might get up, hands gripping the arms of his chair, but he stayed in his seat. "Cram it up your ass, Frohike!"  
  
"But, if I did that, you wouldn't be a virgin any more." Frohike waited for the punchline to land.  
  
Langly's face reddened in sputtering rage, before he turned his chair back around. "Okay, _some of us_ have work to do. _Some of us_ think there's a midget maniac out th--" He turned his head back toward Frohike first, eyes suddenly intense, and the chair followed. "Go stand next to that cabinet, over there. I want to see something."  
  
Reid shook his head, still perched sideways in the chair to see them both. "He's too tall."  
  
"Yeah, but I want to see it. I know how tall he is. I know how tall that cabinet is. I think we're at about the same angle as that camera, from here."  
  
"A comparison to the existing data, just to narrow things down." Reid nodded.  
  
Frohike squinted suspiciously at them, tucking his head and pulling his chin back. "I'm just going to stand next to a cabinet. And you're not going to set some kind of attack robot on me."  
  
"Come on, Frohike. You've said worse. Just go. I need a quick picture, so we can figure out how tall this guy is." Langly threw an arm out, waving Frohike off, while his other hand groped for a drawer under the desk that held his camera equipment.


	5. Chapter 5

Minutes later, they had photos, and Byers had come down from the security room, he and Frohike hovering just behind Langly.  
  
"I think it's a woman," Byers posited, leaning over Langly's shoulder.  
  
"Stop breathing down my damn neck, Byers."  
  
"He doesn't want Special Agent Twink getting jealous," Frohike teased, leaning over to look at the images on another monitor.  
  
"That's a lot out of you. You're the first one of us to ever hit on a fed. And you were _serious_ , too," Langly retorted. "I think Byers is right, though. The proportions are weird. Shorter than Frohike usually means a midget, and that's not a midget. Probably a woman."  
  
Reid grabbed the edge of the desk and rolled his huge chair closer. "If you look here, the vest cuts like you'd expect, so that's probably someone wearing a standard size. It's probably an extra-small, but that still throws off the lines of the body. I'm not convinced we can definitively say that's a man or a woman, but you're right, statistically, at that size, it's more likely to be a woman."  
  
Langly leaned back to stretch, successfully avoiding Reid on one side, but solidly elbowing Frohike and sliding his fist up Byers's neck. "Okay, getting claustrophobic, here. I can't breathe with this many people sucking my air, so why don't you two go fuck around on your computers, and I'll put the folder on the network. Ping me if you spot something. Don't ping me to talk shit about Agent Chicken No Chopsticks -- I swear to god I will drop you off the damn network like a turd in a sinkhole, Frohike."  
  
"Do I need to get you some Midol and a chocolate bar?" Frohike called back as he moved to turn on the screens on the other side of the room, and Langly shook his head and rolled his eyes, as if praying for deliverance.  
  
Byers shrugged at Reid. "They do this, sometimes. You live with anybody for as long as we have..."  
  
"I'm here, and I don't belong here. The rhythm's going to be off, until we're done, and I go back where I came from." Reid tipped his head, offering Byers a sympathetic look.  
  
"Probably," Byers agreed, nodding. A resigned smile settled onto his face. "But, they get like this without the help."  
  
"If you two are done having a touchy-feely moment, stop leaning on my chair, Byers. And go tell Frohike I want his opinion on these eyes. This guy, girl, whatever looks straight at the camera, right here." Langly tapped the screen, looked at his hand, and then pulled a damp wipe of some sort from between two screens and swabbed the fingerprints off the screen he was using.  
  
Reid plucked the wipe from his fingers before he could toss it, and started on another screen.  
  
"Tell him yourself," Byers said, heading for his own desk, which joined with Frohike's. Somewhere between the two points, a loud, metallic crunch could be heard. "Dammit, Langly! How many times do I have to tell you to stop throwing cans!?"  
  
"What's that, Byers? Can't hear you! Tinnitus is acting up!" Langly taunted, labelling a new folder for Frohike and saving frames from the video into it, with a note on what he was looking for.  
  
Reid suddenly leaned back, dropping into the chair, the screen wipe still in the hand he gestured at the screen with. "Looking at the camera. They know where it is -- they've done the research. Professional enough to be aware of it, but not professional enough to avoid looking at it. Of course, with the balaclava, it really doesn't help us that much."  
  
"Sure it does. Even in greyscale, that person's probably white and light-eyed. I think that's light eyes. Might be a reflection, but that's what Frohike's going to tell us." Langly put a hand on Reid's wrist, he kept talking, leaning excitedly toward the screen reflected in his glasses. "We've got a white person between about four foot ten and five foot, probably with blue or amber eyes, who knows the inside of this building well enough to get into it like that, but not well enough to be comfortable."  
  
"Knowing the inside of the building doesn't count." Reid pulled casually away from the hand, resting his elbow on the desk and his chin on his hand. "That knowledge can come from the blueprints, same way we got it. Knowing what's stored in the building might. Knowing exactly where to find the file they wanted almost definitely does."  
  
"Genius," Langly declared, almost reverently, pulling a bottle out of a desk drawer and washing down a pill with Jolt, before putting the bottle back. At Reid's slightly inquisitive look, he sighed and re-opened the drawer, tossing the bottle over.  
  
"It's... actually Midol." Reid looked amused.  
  
"Sinus headaches, okay, the air in here is shit and I haven't been outside in probably nine years." Langly took the bottle back and shut it in the drawer. "I used to be a little touchy about satellite imaging. Now that I'm dead? I'm _really_ touchy."  
  
"Antihistamines, caffeine, and acetaminophen. Migraines and allergies. Yeah, that's what you'd get in an environment like this." Reid leaned back in the chair and let it move with him. "This chair is really fantastic. How hard was this to do?"  
  
Langly laughed, as he set aside some information for Byers -- numerical and motion patterns. "Pay me and you can have one."  
  
"I might." A split second later, Reid suddenly sat up like he'd woken from a nightmare, reaching across Langly for the phone Garcia had given him. "What time is it? I have to call G-- the Queen."  
  
Langly squinted at the corner of his screen. "Byers! The Chinese!"  
  
The room filled with the sound of the door buzzer, and Langly squeezed his eyes shut until it stopped. Byers made his way to the door.  
  
"Not that late. They only deliver until eleven."  
  
Reid hit the only number the phone had and waited. "Hey, it's me. Remember how I asked what was in the cabinets, while you were still working on the doors? Well... we need to know what's in the cabinets. Whoever that was knew exactly what they were looking for. Something really specific was taken out of that building, and we need to know what it was, before they try to blow up the building again, to hide it."  
  
He paused, eyes closed as he listened. "I know most of them aren't scanned -- that's the point. That may be the only copy of whatever that was."  
  
The only words Langly could make out from the other end of the call were distinctly frustrated.  
  
"Because I know there's only one person I'd trust to do something completely illegal for the greater good." Reid's eyes sparkled, even as he held the phone away from his ear. "Because you're the best. Isn't this the Office of Uncompromising Excellence?"  
  
The phone squawked loudly in response.  
  
"Yes. Ye-- I promise. I promise you I will eat and sleep. I may be a little later than I thought, but it will be because I ate and slept. There's food right now. We've also got a bad description of the thief. Do you want it, or do you want me to wait until it's good?"  
  
As Reid rattled off what they had, so far, Byers came up with a bag that smelled of food. He shoved boxes at Langly, as he fished them out of the bag. "Egg rolls. More egg rolls. Vegetable lo mein -- not pork?"  
  
"Dammit, Frohike!" Langly shoved the keyboard back under the monitors and double-checked the contents of the boxes.  
  
"It's possible the restaurant screwed that up." Byers offered another box as Reid hung up. "Orange chicken?"  
  
"Thanks. Breakfast will be on me." Reid eyed the pair of chopsticks tucked into the side of the box.  
  
"Keep it in your pocket," Langly said, around a mouthful of egg roll. "Our budget will handle a couple days of feeding the Queen's pet fed."  
  
"And a fork for Dr Reid." Byers pulled a plastic fork and a bundle of napkins out of the bottom of the bag. "Impressive academic history, by the way. If you'd like to visit some time to discuss the--"  
  
"Stop hitting on the fed, Byers," Langly washed down the end of an egg roll with Jolt and looked grim. "This needs coffee."  
  
"I've been saying that for hours," Reid agreed, without clarifying which part he agreed with, before taking the fork and napkins from Byers. "If you can find a safe way to stay in contact, I'd be interested in your conclusions about a couple of cases I've seen your name on. Medicine isn't really my thing, but I have enough of a background in biochemistry to follow some of those thoughts through the typos in the official file."  
  
"We'll work something out," Byers said with a smile, backing up and offering half a smile as he stepped down. "Make your own coffee, Langly."  
  
"That machine is the devil and it has a vendetta!" Langly complained. "We abandoned the old Mr Coffee, and Frohike wanted something fancier. None of my old code works with the new hardware, and I think I pissed it off."  
  
"You know, anthropomorphising inanimate objects is a common method of dealing with stress, but unless you accidentally loaded an actual AI more advanced than I've seen in the field, I doubt it's got anything personal against you." Reid leaned back in the chair with his box of chicken in one hand, eating carefully, not to drip sauce on anything.  
  
"I speak to machines," Langly argued, gesturing with an egg roll and spattering hot mustard on the floor. "It's personal."


	6. Chapter 6

Some time and a great deal of food later found them in front of the coffee maker, Langly offering a bag of coffee grounds to Reid at arm's length. Reid studied the machine, briefly, wiping a few spots off with a paper towel.  
  
"A friend of mine has one of these." Reid sounded a little surprised, as he took the coffee from Langly. "Here, it works like this..."  
  
Langly watched Reid load the machine like he could do it in his sleep. Exactly the way he, himself, would have done.  
  
"And then you just push the button over here, and it should make coffee." Reid shrugged and hit the button.  
  
"Okay, I have done that a hundred times, and it just spits steam at me." Langly folded his arms.  
  
Reid's brows lowered in confusion and he watched the machine begin to dribble coffee into the pot. "So, what are the chances someone else got to the coffee maker before you did? So far, I've seen the chair you rebuilt, heard something about attack robots, and you've admitted to programming the old coffee maker. I doubt you're the only one here who could rig it to do... interesting things."  
  
Langly leaned back, extending one leg, until he was level with the kitchen doorway. "Byers! What did you do to the coffee maker!?"  
  
"There's nothing wrong with the coffee maker!" Byers called back. "And why me? Why not Frohike? It's his coffee maker!"  
  
"Because Frohike couldn't code his way out of a wet paper sack."  
  
" _You_ couldn't get into the software," Reid pointed out, "so what if it's not a software problem? What if it's just a straight mechanical trigger?"  
  
"Then why didn't it get you?" Langly brought his leg down and swung vertical.  
  
"Byers and Frohike were the last people in this room. They know I've been talking about coffee." Reid pointed to the high ceiling. "I even said it to Byers. They also know you're terrified of the coffee maker, so you're not going to make it. Byers isn't joking. There's nothing wrong with the coffee maker. I just made coffee. Which means one of two things: either it's all in your head, or one of them has already dismantled it. I don't know the three of you well enough to pick a conclusion."  
  
"I know where you both sleep!" Langly yelled toward the door. He pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes with both hands. "Perspective. I forget how much we need another one, sometimes."  
  
"How long have you ... been here?" Reid asked, finally.  
  
"A very long time. We just disappeared for a while, first. I said we should go to Japan or Costa Rica or something, but Byers thought we'd have a chance to get everything back in a few years and Frohike didn't want to give up Maryland for good. Came back and bought this place with a fake corporation. It's supposedly a warehouse for fishing boat parts. We've been here since... what, oh-nine, maybe? We lost everything. Built back up in shadows in shadows. There's a whole trail that leads somewhere in California that should trip before anyone gets near this place, but here you are, and I am... not happy. It took Byers and me years to set that up." Langly pulled his glasses down and reached over his head for coffee cups.  
  
"One step at a time. The Queen will help," Reid promised, checking to see if the pot had finished filling.  
  
"So... you and her...?" Langly asked.  
  
"What?" Reid blinked a few times before he found a hook to hang the question on. "No, no. We just work together. I'm not really her type. To be honest, she's not mine. We're friends."  
  
"You almost called her something, before. With a 'G'. What's her name? Gloria? Gertrude? Gormlaith? Guinevere?"  
  
"You are welcome to try calling her any of those." Reid's smile was close-mouthed, but wholly unsubtle. "I'd like to see what happens when you start guessing."  
  
"I think I'll pass, thanks." Langly held the cups out, as the machine turned itself off.  
  
"Wise man." Reid poured. "Should I bring the pot out?"  
  
Langly shook his head and put both cups in one hand to rub his eye again. "This is usually the part where I retreat to the chair and stare at the ceiling in the dark until something sparks. We've got everything we're going to get out of the images, by themselves. Frohike might get a little further. But, we're down to banging ideas together until we get fire."  
  
"Headache?" Reid asked, thinking of the amount of caffeine he'd watched Langly put down.  
  
"My eyes are killing me. Yet another opportunity to remind me I'm not thirty-five any more." Langly set the cups on the kitchen island. "It's not the Jolt. I can hear you thinking it. It's the stress. I can read a screen for three days if it's something that's already happened or something that... doesn't matter. But, you get life and death into it and I max out at about fourteen hours without a break. I was on day two, when you got here. I didn't used to be like this."  
  
"You weren't pretending to be dead, then, either. We dropped a lot in your lap without warning, today." Reid hesitantly reached out and touched Langly's elbow. "I'll help you pull the chair back, and we'll trade. I'll sit on something else. We can talk about something that's not important, for a while -- the building's going to be full of federal agents for a couple of days. We have time before our subject can try again."  
  
Langly nodded, a hand still pressed into his eye, as he made his way back toward the front of the building. "I just need a minute to breathe. I swear I'm better than this."  
  
"I'm not seeing anything wrong with 'this'. You need a break. I probably need a break, but I'm terrible at figuring that out, so thank you for doing it for me." Reid followed Langly through the workroom, leaving the coffee behind.  
  
"Don't pat my ass, Special Agent Suit and Tie," Langly snapped, as they came out into the front room. "I know what competence looks like, and this isn't it."  
  
"Actually, it is," Reid corrected, stepping around Langly to ease the chair down toward him. "You're talking about doing something that's fairly normal in higher academia. You absorb all the information you can handle and then you let your mind play with it until it starts to make sense. That's a substantial part of writing theses and academic articles. We're missing less than we think we are. Thinking about something else for a bit will _help_."  
  
"I thought you wanted him patting your ass," Frohike noted, from the other side of the room. "Or was that grabbing?"  
  
"You're lucky I love and respect this chair, Frohike." Langly jabbed a finger in Frohike's direction, before continuing his retreat with the chair.  
  
Byers cricked a finger at Reid, who stepped to the side to hear him. "Is he all right?"  
  
Reid nodded. "Stress and Jolt."  
  
Byers shook his head and sighed. "Yeah, he's fine. Coffee's good. Cup of coffee and a dark room, and he'll be back up here cursing at the screen in an hour or two. We'll keep working, see what we come up with." Byers glanced over his shoulder. "Did I hear him mention 'Vanity', earlier? I can't imagine he'd have missed that..."  
  
"He didn't miss it," Reid assured Byers. "You see it, too."  
  
Byers looked grim as he nodded. "Go get the coffee, before he realises you're not following him. I'll put everything where he'll be looking for it later."


	7. Chapter 7

Langly had folded the chair all the way out, and he sprawled across every vibrating cushion it had, groaning loudly, a half-finished cup of coffee hanging from one hand. "Mind-melting bliss. I love this chair."  
  
"It's a pretty fancy chair," Reid agreed, from the oversized beanbag chair next to it, gazing up at the glow-in-the-dark stars that hung somewhere in the distance between them and the roof. "The stars are nice, too. Southern constellations?"  
  
"Yeah, Byers thought Australia would be a nice change. Took me a couple years to get used to it." Langly took his glasses off and tucked them into a pocket on the side of the chair.  
  
"He seems like an interesting guy. Cares about you, too. You know, he stopped me on the way back to ask if you were all right?"  
  
"Yeah, that's Byers. Not often, but he does like to make sure we're not all going to die, every now and again." Langly laughed and regretted it. "Frohike, too, to be fair. We're all carrying something. You live with anyone long enough, you know?"  
  
"I've heard," Reid said, cautiously. "I haven't lived with anyone except my mother."  
  
Langly snorted. "And Frohike calls _me_ a virgin."  
  
"Frohike seems to have a notable interest in your sex life," Reid shot back, deflecting the implied question.  
  
"He just likes rubbing in that he actually has one -- _had_ one, now. None of us do, any more. But, I guess he used to get around." Langly stretched and adjusted the vibrations to a lower intensity -- something less loud. "I just didn't _usually_ have the time and the fucks to give at any point when it would've actually gotten me laid. That's not _zero_ , it's just a hell of a lot less than Frohike."  
  
"Every once in a while, I try. I don't think I'm going to try, again. I can't do that to myself, again." Reid took a long drink of coffee, trying to bury those memories under the present moment.  
  
"She break up with you?" Langly asked, sounding like he might be starting to wind up about it.  
  
"She died."  
  
"That's kind of permanent. What'd she die of?" Langly sounded much more subdued.  
  
"Murder. Gunshot. I was there, and I really don't want to talk about it." Reid shifted in the beanbag, trying to sit a bit more vertically, but the filling flowed around him in the most useless ways.  
  
There was a dull clink as Langly set his coffee on the floor, and then he leaned over the side of the chair. "That's fucking horrible. I've lost friends like that. ... I'd hug you, but this is the most awkward position--"  
  
"I don't really do hugs much," Reid confessed. "But, thanks." He paused. "If I sink much further into this chair, though, I might have to take you up on it, just to get out of here."  
  
Langly struggled not to laugh, but it was useless. After a moment, he rested his head on the vibrating arm of the chair, cackling, and Reid followed him down.  
  
"This is the stupidest thing," Reid sputtered through his laughter.  
  
"I don't even know why we own that thing. It's too... well, you can tell why I don't sit in it. Byers likes a firmer seat, which I've gotten no end of jokes out of, and the last time Frohike tried to sit in it, he threw his back out."  
  
"It's a fed trap," Reid joked, trying to rock forward hard enough to straighten his legs and make contact with the floor. After a few tries, he stopped to finish his coffee.  
  
"It's perfect. The next time I want to catch a fed, I'll just tell them to sit down." Langly pushed his hair back. It didn't stay. "Seriously, do I need to help you up?"  
  
"Maybe," Reid admitted, stretching to set his empty cup out of the range of most accidents. "I can probably roll over sideways..."  
  
"It's like watching a tortoise try to flip itself over. Stop that, I feel like I'm taking the Voigt-Kampff." Langly rocked his chair forward, folding it back into a sitting position, and stood with the motion. "Give me your hands. My back hurts just looking at you."  
  
"I'm pretty sure I can--" Reid protested and then gave up after another futile attempt to escape the beanbag without breaking anything. Finally, he surrendered and held his hands out.  
  
Langly grabbed and pulled, hauling Reid to his feet. Feet which had landed between his own, once they touched the ground. Langly realised too late that he'd misjudged the distance, catching Reid as the man bounced off his chest, and turning to the side to stop the momentum.  
  
Blinking, Reid looked up from where he'd been dipped like a dancer. "Well, this is new."  
  
"I have a headache. I missed." Langly's hair slipped from behind his ear and spilled across Reid's face, and Reid reached up to tuck it back. "Thanks. I'm just gonna... not drop you on the floor."  
  
"I appreciate that."  
  
When Langly didn't move, still looking a bit perplexed at the situation and a correct resolution, Reid squared his chin and forced himself to uncurl his fingers where they remained behind Langly's ear, holding his hair in place. His thumb brushed the edge of Langly's ear. "This is completely inappropriate..."  
  
"But, you're thinking it, aren't you?" Langly's mouth stretched in an awkward smile.  
  
"It's a horrible idea and one I will probably deny having had," Reid murmured, "but I might be thinking it."  
  
"God help me, I'm flirting with the fed," Langly muttered, squinting down at the man in his arms. "Are you going to punch me in the mouth if I kiss you?"  
  
"No, but I might drop myself on the floor." Reid laughed nervously. "I have no idea what I'm doing or how I'm supposed to feel about it, and as much as that's a conversation I don't want to have with myself right now--"  
  
"You might flip out." Langly tipped his head from side to side, considering, feeling Reid's fingers slide through his hair as he moved. "I can live with that chance. Can you?"  
  
Put like that, Reid did stop to think about it. He'd lived his life in a bubble, and he knew it. He was comfortable with that, and every time he stepped out... things happened. Not all of them were bad, if he was honest with himself. But, after the last time, he wasn't even pursuing things he wanted, he was just making choices that let him avoid things he wanted even less than what he chose.  
  
He could feel discomfort twisting in his chest. There were hands on him -- hands he didn't really know. Hands that hadn't been washed in who knew how long. Coffee-breath washed over him, but it was no worse than his own. And he had absolutely no question Langly would back off, if he asked. But, the last time he'd let someone get this physically close with this sort of intent, it had been good. Pointless and foolish, but good. He had no regrets.  
  
"Yes." Reid's voice cracked and he paused to swallow. "I can live with it. You only live once, right?"  
  
"He says to the man who lived twice," Langly quipped, leaning down to press his lips against Reid's.  
  
It was a stiff kiss, but Reid melted into it, letting old memories carry him into new memories, surrounded by the smells of coffee, caffeine sweat, and unexpectedly expensive shampoo. His lips were the first to part, and he braced himself for it, uncertain, but willing to push himself, his hand sliding back through Langly's hair to clutch the surprisingly soft locks at the back of the man's head. The expensive shampoo was a good investment, then. The uneasy press of lips turned into something else as Reid pulled Langly's lower lip between his teeth, nibbling as once had been done to him. He tried to recreate that kiss from memory, from the other side, but Langly's lips were less forgiving than he remembered his own having been.  
  
Lust blossomed in Langly's gut, and it was not a pretty flower, rather a reminder of every time he'd done or been done to before, the majority of those poor choices or unfortunate circumstance. But, none of those kisses had been quite like this, though he did keep expecting to be stabbed in the back at any moment. He was kissing a fed. A fed who was worshipping his lips with breath and teeth and tongue. And that was a lot more effort than most people seemed to put into it, but he wasn't about to complain. Still, he tugged his lip gently back from Reid's mouth.  
  
"If we're going to do this -- if this is going to happen, it shouldn't be here. I don't want to get back up to the front and find out Frohike put on the infrared, just to have something else to give me a hard time about."  
  
Reid shifted his grip and stepped back, putting his weight back on his own feet. "I don't think anyone's going to be happy about it if I try to walk out that door with you. Including you."  
  
Half a laugh slipped out on Langly's next breath. "No, not further out, further in. I do sleep somewhere. A bed. Does the bed add pressure? I mean, we could ignore the bed. It's just the room I know nobody else has any cameras in, because I'm just not that interesting when I'm unconscious."  
  
"Does the room with no cameras come with an en-suite bath?" Reid asked after a moment, patting at his lip. "I think I split my lip on your teeth. Maybe my teeth. There were teeth and my lip, and now I'm bleeding. Was bleeding. I think it stopped. It's not serious, I just want to make sure I didn't drip on my shirt before I stopped it."  
  
Langly pressed the heel of his hand into his eye and laughed. "Yeah. Yeah, it does. One of the defining points in building this place was so I wouldn't have to share a bathroom with either of those idiots again. Let me just grab my glasses and turn off the chair."  
  
"We could... take the chair," Reid suggested, as he heard Langly turning off the vibrations.  
  
Langly put his glasses on before he tried to answer. "You want to... in my chair...?"  
  
"It's a very nice chair." Reid paused for a beat. "Like you said, the bed might be pressure, but a very nice chair is just a very nice chair, right?"  
  
Langly opened his mouth and then closed it, nodding firmly. "We're taking the chair."


	8. Chapter 8

Langly leaned in the doorway, watching Reid's face in the mirror, as Reid rinsed his hands and washed the smear of blood off his lips.

"I hope you're not going to arrest me for assaulting a federal agent," Langly teased.

"You don't know me well enough to have seen it, but I should probably arrest myself for assaulting a federal agent at least three times between getting out of bed and my first cup of coffee. Or maybe I should just move the couch. And the table. And the-- maybe I should just get one of those one-cup machines and put it somewhere I can reach without getting up." Reid caught Langly's eye in the mirror, as an embarrassed smile fixed itself on his face. He dried himself off with the mostly-clean looking towel beside the sink.

"All patched up?" Langly asked, the hint of a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

"Much better," Reid agreed, taking a last look at his lip.

Langly approached behind him, a bit to the side for better visibility in the mirror, peering over his shoulder for a better look. "Yeah, that doesn't look too bad."

"I should just call Her Majesty, before we get too distracted. I should tell her I'm sleeping, so she won't call at the worst possible time. I don't even know what that time would be, but why leave the opportunity open?" Reid patted his pockets until he found the phone, and made the call, paying little mind to Langly, until the man kissed his neck.

Reid squeaked and the voice on the other end of the phone grew concerned and then commanding.

"I'm fine. I promise. There is nothing more dangerous than the furniture here," Reid went on, breathlessly, holding back a laugh. He pulled the phone away from his ear. "She wants to talk to you."

"Tell her I shouldn't talk with my mouth full." Langly nipped at Reid's ear, and Reid burst out laughing.

"I will not tell her that! I will not impugn my virtue before the Queen!" Reid paused as the phone squawked. "No! No, there is no impugning of my virtue going on. Everything's fine! No-- NO. Do not tell her that. ... Fine. Put money on it. You'll lose it when I get back. ... Yes, in one piece. I'll call you in a few hours. I just need a break. All the pieces are there, and when I wake up, they'll go together." He squirmed and tried to pass the phone to Langly, hitting him in the glasses, instead. "She insists. Tell her everything's fine."

Langly snatched the phone and backed up a step. "What?" A pause. "Don't be ridiculous, okay? You will get your information, and you will get your _federal agent_ back in one piece. ... Yeah, that's right, I did the research. Got curious. ... Yeah, I'm concerned, okay? I'm really pretty seriously concerned, and it has a lot more to do with _your security_ than him. He's fine. He'll be fine when he gets back to you, too. I'm not going to do anything to your fed. If anything happens to him, it's going to be because we're all dead, because that is the only way anyone's getting in here. That and a whole lot of hours with a cutting torch." He sighed. "Yes. I promise. Has it occurred to you he's a grown-ass man and can look after hims--? ... Oh. Yeah, all right. ... Fine. Yes. No! He'll be fine. _Because he's with me and my ass is worth a lot to me._ " He thrust the phone back at Reid.

"I'll see you... probably later today, assuming we can get all the pieces togeth-- Yeah, I'll send you what we have when I wake up, okay? Okay. Good night." Reid slipped the phone back into his pocket. "That was your fault, you know."

"Couldn't help it. I've always wanted to do that to someone." Langly laughed and leaned back against the wall, smile askew at a different angle to his glasses. "Not unforgivable, I hope?"

"In another time and place, I might find it concerning," Reid admitted, eyes wary, "but no. Not unforgivable."

"You okay? You're looking a little..." Langly trailed off, suggestively.

"I'm having second thoughts."

"If you're having second thoughts--" Langly cut in, but Reid kept talking over him.

"But, my third thoughts are that I don't want to be having second thoughts, and that those second thoughts are not actually relevant in any way, so I fully intend to ignore them." Reid smiled, more with his eyes than his lips, and closed the gap between them with a slow, very intentional step. "Are you still up for this?"

"I think down might require a jackhammer and industrial explosives." Langly cautiously slid his hands down Reid's sides, half-expecting him to change his mind.

Reid's pursed lips did nothing to hide the smile that threatened to split his face, as he leaned in and pinned Langly to the wall, lips to lips. This time the kiss was hungry, wanting to remember how this felt and forget everything that came before, demanding total control, but surrendering to the slightest suggestion. The kiss of a man who wanted to be wanted.

And if anything, Langly wanted. His hands slipped down further, cupping Reid's ass, and then further still. As he felt Reid's hand cup the back of his neck, Langly lifted the man by his thighs, thrust his hips forward, and leaned into the turn, flipping Reid against the wall with a solid thump and a surprised squeak.

"You good?" he breathed, his lip caught a little too tightly in Reid's teeth.

Reid blinked a few times and forced his jaw to relax. "I don't think I've ever been in this position before. That's not a complaint."

"Neither have I, but it looked good on film." Langly tried to duck his head, but at this distance, just bumped his forehead against Reid's, knocking his glasses askew.

"I think I like it." Reid crossed his legs and pulled Langly's hips tight against him, half in an attempt not to slide down the wall. He raised a hand and nudged Langly's glasses back up. "You probably want to take those off before something happens to them."

"This close, I can probably still make out your face without them." Langly paused. "And now I'm the one that needs another set of hands."

Reid tipped the glasses up before he slid them off Langly's face, to keep from poking him in the eye. "And... where do I put them?"

"Just toss them in the sink. They'll survive that, and I'll know where they are." As the frames clicked and skittered against the porcelain, Langly rolled his hips, grinding against Reid, feeling those long-fingered hands scrabble at him for purchase. "Now, where were w--"

The last word was muffled by the collision of lips as Reid finally got a grip on the back of Langly's neck, again, and closed the gap of inches that had been opened by the removal of Langly's glasses. A sloppy, raw kiss, this time, punctuated by the click of teeth on teeth, the taste of coffee having gone sour in both their mouths, to a grand total of no one's dismay -- the sensation was all that mattered.

Fresh air was hard to come by, as they panted into each other's mouths, and Reid found himself dizzy with recycled breath as Langly's hips pressed against him, grinding slow and hard.

"I want this." Reid panted the muffled words into Langly's mouth, as if there were any question with the way he clutched at Langly's back, neck, arms.

Langly moaned warmly, nipping at Reid's tongue. "Tell me."

Broken bits of sentences fell out of Reid's mouth as his tongue decided with every word whether to speak or to tease and taste. "Want you. Right here. Just like this. Harder. Make me-- Want to-- _Burn it into my mind_! I want to remember this."

The choice of words lanced a chill down Langly's spine, but the raw desire in Reid's voice burned that away. This wasn't just because they had nothing better to do. This wasn't just going through the motions. Not a favour to anyone but themselves, in the end. He'd wanted, and he'd been wanted, but the two had never aligned quite like this. Someone had always been only half interested, by this point, if not already done, but not this time. His arms ached and his hips were sore with Reid's bony legs hung on them -- and that meant Reid's legs were probably going numb -- but, neither of them had any desire to stop.

"Tell me," he breathed, again.

Reid let his head fall back against the wall, tipping his chin up, and Langly's lips were on his neck before he finished moving. "I want to remember this. I want it to block out the sun. I want to remember how this feels, being pressed against this wall, because I _want_ to be, with a computer programmer of questionable virtue standing between my thighs--"

"My virtue is not questionable." Langly laughed against the damp skin of Reid's neck. "You're benefiting from it right now."

"If that's your hot, hard _virtue_ pressed up against my crotch, I'm going to have to re-evaluate my views on an awful lot of historical literature." Reid coughed out half a laugh and took a long slow breath to steady himself as Langly's hips stopped pressing so firmly against him.

"Are you going to fall, if I move my hand? Because this is great, but my jeans are doing a number on my _virtue_."

"Probably?" Reid slid a hand down Langly's arm. "You could borrow my hand, again. In a day that has been entirely about needing someone else's hands..."

"You just want to cop a feel."

"Well, not _just_..."

"Hurry up. I want to bring you off before my arms fall off and I drop you right on your relatively attractive ass." Langly canted his hips back, to give Reid room, and his fingers dug into Reid's thighs with the first touch of those long fingers. He rested his forehead against the wall beside Reid's head, breathing slowly as Reid's hand adjusted him in his trousers. And if that wasn't some strange new intimacy -- usually a touch like that meant the jeans were coming _off_. Or at least a few inches down.

"Give me just a second," Reid begged as his fingers cleared the top of the cloth, Langly's sweat heavy on his fingers as he tugged _himself_ into a better position. As soon as his hand returned to Langly's neck, Langly pressed forward again.

"If this is how you want to remember me, then let me give you something to remember." Langly rocked his hips slowly, grinding as hard as he could bear.

It didn't take Reid long to fall back into the rhythm, little sounds of desperate desire falling out of his mouth until he tipped his head back down, forcing Langly's mouth back to his lips from his neck. "Faster," he panted against Langly's lips, coherence against Langly's own breathy groans. " _More_."

The kiss they fell into tasted as much of blood as the bitterness of old caffeine, as Reid's lip split again in the same place, and he made no attempt to address it, forcing the faint twinge out of his mind in favour of the waves of pleasure that washed over him with every breath. His legs flexed, body barely in motion as he pressed back against Langly, pulled Langly closer.

And the kiss fell apart as Reid's breathing turned to irregular gasps, one hand squeezing Langly's shoulder and the other clenched tight, inadvertently pulling Langly's hair.

"Tell me," Langly panted against Reid's cheek, his entire body burning with lust and exhaustion.

Reid managed a breathless sound of frustration, twisting his hips between the wall and Langly's body in a way that made Langly's breathing stutter, fingers suddenly numb.

"Again," Langly demanded, burying his face against Reid's neck, trying to maintain control of his trembling arms.

"Yes," Reid breathed, open-mouthed, the word repeated until it lost meaning, fading out into panting. One surprised sound, pleased, bloomed in his chest, blossomed out his mouth, as he became the pleasure. No more tension in his thighs, no ache in his clenched hands, no uncompromising demands from his tight-pressed flesh. Just one transcendent moment of muffled clarity.

Langly pulled back just enough to watch Reid's face, still chasing his own release, the vision in his arms a strong shove in the right direction. A ragged moan that could have been pleasure or pain wrenched from him as his body stiffened, every muscle tight as his mind stopped cold and his vision went nuclear white.

Blinking against the brightness inside his eyes, Langly tried to focus on Reid, both of them panting and shaking. "You good?"

"I'm ..." Reid's laugh burbled out of him as if it were inevitable. "Good. Yeah, let's go with good."

Langly couldn't get the smile off his face, not that he was trying very hard. "If I put you down... Can you feel your legs?"

"Nnnno." Reid blinked a few times as that occurred to him.

"Shit." Langly laughed, resting his head against the wall over Reid's shoulder. "Okay, arms over my shoulders. I'm going to try very hard not to drop you, but I make no promises."

Reid grabbed his own arms behind Langly's neck. "You sound like you have a plan."

"You're going to duck, because you're way too tall and I don't want to smack your head on the doorframe, and then I'm going to put you in the chair. And fall on the floor. I have no idea how that hasn't happened yet, but it's going to." Langly nudged Reid up until he could get his forearms under Reid's ass, taking the pressure off his hands. "Annnd I can't see. You make a better door than a window. This'll be fun."


	9. Chapter 9

Somehow, they made it out of the bathroom, Reid hunched over one of Langly's shoulders, looking back over his own shoulder and trying to see for both of them. "Left! No, _my_ left!"

Langly staggered and tripped, banging his foot on the chair, as he finally dropped Reid, the arms around his neck pulling him down, too. They landed mostly in the chair, the sound of the impact and the chair's complaints echoing off the rafters, Reid sprawled with one leg over an arm and Langly twisted uncomfortably with one arm pinned under Reid's ass. "I had visions of this going better."

"Is anything broken?" Reid asked, still trying to find all the parts of his body.

"No." Langly paused. "I don't think so. ... No."

"Okay, we can fix this. I have most of a degree in physics."

Langly giggled in defeat, until the door of the room flew open to reveal Frohike with a baseball bat and Byers, behind him, probably also armed below the level of Frohike's shoulder.

"Who's getting murdered in h--" Frohike's face passed from outraged through confused before settling somewhere around amazed. He sniffed at the air. "Wow. Kinky. I guess this means I have to stop calling you 'virgin'."

"You could've stopped that at any time," Langly argued, trying to raise his head from beside Reid's hip, where he was still stuck. "It hasn't been true in like twenty-five years. At least. And now that we've established what's going on, how about you get the hell out of my room?"

The look on Byers's face said he'd pieced together some version of what had happened. "That... doesn't look comfortable. Do you need any help?"

"Byers, the day I want your help in the middle of something like this, it'll be a sign we're ready for a nursing home." Langly managed to twist himself in a way that let him offer a one-eyed glare under his shoulder. "Seriously, get the hell out."

Byers gave Langly a long, slow look, eyebrows rising as he waited for Langly to change his mind. When it didn't happen, he nudged Frohike and cocked his head toward the front of the building. As they moved out of the doorway, Langly shouted after them, "And close the damn door!"

Byers leaned back and grabbed the door, pulling it after himself.

Reid tipped the chair back, trying to lift himself off Langly's arm, and Langly elbowed three of the buttons before he got his arm out from under Reid and his hair stuck between the seat and the arm.

"The chair's jealous," Langly joked, easing himself onto the floor so he could see his hair, as Reid tried to figure out which buttons would turn off the vibration.

"If you've been having good times like that with this chair, I can see why it might be." Reid shifted his weight, pulling the seat cushion out of Langly's way. "Do you think either of them noticed we were completely dressed?"

"I don't think that's something you could avoid noticing. You've still got your tie on." Langly finally got his hair free and pushed it back, looking up at Reid. "Frohike doesn't think anything actually happened. Byers, though... I know that look. He'll ask something tastefully inappropriate, later."

"'Tastefully inappropriate'. I have friends like that." Reid moved over, twisting a bit to the side. "I think we'll both fit. We're skinny."

Langly cocked his head at the space left in the chair. "I'm feeling lucky," he decided, as he scrambled into it, deftly avoiding the buttons as he stretched into the space Reid wasn't occupying, tossing a leg across him anyway. "You should ditch the tie and the jacket before you get caught on something."

"You're probably right." Reid removed the tie first, tucking it into the pocket of his blazer, which was a bit more difficult to remove, but he managed it. "Where should--"

"Throw it on the bed. It's not the floor and we're not in it."

"Glasses in the sink, jacket on the bed... You've got a place for everything," Reid teased, squirming back into a more comfortable position.

"I can find a place for anything in a pinch, after that time somebody -- _possibly me_ \-- left the jack at home to make room for the night-vision goggles." Langly snorted, tipping his head back so he could breathe over the top of Reid's head. "Let me move up a little, and I'll have a place for you, too. You know, for someone who doesn't like hugs, you're pretty cuddly."

"Is that a complaint?" Reid asked as the pressure at his hip shifted up and the chair squeaked and settled.

"Hey, I just report what I see."

"I'd say I'm trying to get over it, but I'd be lying. Let's just say there's a time and a place, and I'm on my way to believing that. And now I'm going to stop talking about it, because talking about it is making me think about it, and that's making this much more difficult than it has to be." Reid held his own hands close against his chest.

"Sorry." Langly sounded like he might actually be. "So, what about the evil midget?"

"Is there any reason to think it's this... Vanity besides the numbers?" Reid asked, reaching around Langly to turn on the vibration in the arms of the chair, currently wedged against their backs.

"Yes and no. I could go either way. Some of it feels like Vanity, but Vanity was never into things that got people hurt." Langly moved to push up his glasses before he realised he wasn't wearing them. "Vanity actually didn't do attacks at all. Espionage only. Steal information, get out, probably sign something on the way out. Digital graffiti, like some kind of Zorro thing. 'Vanity, Vanity, it's always Vanity,' we used to say when there were whispers of data breaches."

Reid stifled a laugh. "And leaving a signature does take a certain vanitas, doesn't it? It'll lead someone right back to you."

Langly tipped his head thoughtfully. "Mmm, sort of. It'll tell them who you are, but that still doesn't tell them where you are or even where you came in from. You do it right, and it won't even tell them when you were there. Not properly, anyway. You can do horrible things to file modification dates, if you're in far enough."

"Strictly computers?" Reid asked after a moment, his hands relaxing as his mind focused on something other than the smell of Langly's sweat and the heat of another body still laid against him.

"Yeah, every time. Never a need for anything else." Langly felt the realisation hit like electricity through his face and fingers. "Vanity never did this kind of break in. If you don't set foot on the property, there's less that can go wrong. That was the theory, and let me tell you, looking back, I wish _we'd_ gotten a grip on that theory sooner. I'd have been spared at least three excursions dressed up like an expensive hooker."

"I'm sorry, did you just say _you_ were dressed up like a _hooker_?" Reid recoiled, trying to get a look at Langly's face.

"Hey, I have great legs," Langly protested. "And it works better from the back. Nice hair, nice legs, nobody looks too close."

Reid finally moved a hand, resting it on the side of the thigh Langly had tossed across his hip. "Okay, _maybe_ from the back. But, back to the point, Vanity signed the job, but it's nothing like Vanity's work. Why?"

"The obvious reason would be it's _not_ Vanity." Langly rubbed behind Reid's ear, absently, as if petting a cat.

"You said it before. Vanity had students and ... the word you used was 'acolytes'." Reid stayed still, uncertain about the hand on his face.

"You've got a good memory." Langly sighed and moved his hand -- moved his whole body to take up a little more of the chair, edging under Reid, where necessary. "It's what Vanity called them. We all figured they were the extra hands on big jobs. The work was still Vanity's, it just needed a little extra help."

Reid shifted out of Langly's way, ending up more on top of Langly than beside him, resting his head on Langly's shoulder. "You've never used a pronoun talking about Vanity. Not him or her or them..."

"Because I don't know. I wasn't sure about The Black Queen, either, but when you call yourself 'Queen', you get a 'her'. _You_ confirmed it." Langly poked Reid in the ribs and got his hand slapped so fast he thought he'd time travelled.

Reid went on without commenting on it. "You know, a lot of people would see 'Vanity' and assume a woman."

"A lot of people don't know enough utter fucking narcissists. Or Narcissus, for that matter. Mr Vain, himself. A figure of legend. A warning to others." Langly snorted derisively. "No, I'm not placing any bets on Vanity. But, I _am_ willing to bet the midget maniac is a woman who's worked more than one of Vanity's jobs. Which may or may not mean she's Vanity, but it doesn't feel right."

"If it is Vanity, what would've changed?" Reid asked, laying a hand flat on Langly's chest.

Langly sighed and groaned. "Okay, let's take the job from the top. What happened here? I've got some assumptions, but you know what happened before I got involved."

"It started out like a run of the mill hostage situation, as far as I know, but the first demand was a little weird -- the subjects wanted to talk to a specific member of our team, which is how this ended up in our laps. Which is exactly where someone with a habit of not getting caught would not want it to be on their first job out of their comfort zone." Reid's eyes slid closed and one finger tapped at Langly's chest. "Unless this isn't their first or they're actually just that vain."

Langly slipped his hand under the tapping finger. "Does it count as vain, if we didn't catch them? Vanity or not, they really are that good."

"No, they're just that lucky. I don't think they're getting away with that again." Reid shook his head against Langly's shoulder. "Most of the plan went wrong -- we've got them on video, the building didn't blow up, there's three living people they had to have at least negotiated with in custody. We're holding a lot more than I think they were expecting. The only thing we missed was that the vent was large enough for someone their size to exit through, which I'll be honest, if it's big enough to get a _ferret_ through, somebody needs to be on the other side of it."

"Beastmaster." Langly grinned over Reid's head. "Man, we should've used _ferrets_ on the Octium job."

"Didn't that end with you getting arrested after faking a peanut allergy?"

"I hate that you know that."

"Anyone with access to your arrest record knows that. And I'm not sure Kodo and Podo would've improved that situation much."

"Lies. Ferrets would've been a great distraction." Langly huffed. "But, you were saying something about the midget maniac not successfully striking twice."

"We've learned enough to get in faster. Another attempt with these methods is going to go even less well," Reid pointed out.

"Which is a reason not to do it again," Langly retorted. "As far as we know, she's already got what she wanted and there's no reason to try again."

"The only reason to go in is to stop us from figuring out what's missing, which I think was the point in the first place. Hostages keep our eyes on that floor, on the guys with the guns. In theory, there's no reason for us to be looking anywhere else -- everything important is happening right in front of us."

"Except it's not, because the point is the theft." Langly drummed his fingers on his own chest, under Reid's hand. "What are the chances these are two unrelated events?"

"Close to zero," Reid decided, after a moment. "It's too convenient, otherwise. Turn on the television and just notice a hostage crisis in a building you want to break into? Who's going to walk through the police and the FBI just to get to the building, and then break in, in the middle of all that? No, that doesn't make sense. I can't say it's impossible, because people have their own internal logic, and sometimes it's pretty out there, but..."

"Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is the hostages were a front."

"Yeah."

"We need to know what got stolen, don't we?"

"It would tell us a lot about other potential targets, assuming there are any. Given that what's there isn't digitised, it's either an attempt to gain information or to hide it, and I don't think it's hide, because that would be much easier done by just triggering the explosives without the performance. Destroying the documents completely would be much more effective and much less dangerous. This is just the only source of ... something." Reid gestured vaguely and yawned.

"Which Her Majesty is going to figure out for us."

Reid made an affirmative sound.

"And there's the headache I forgot I had." Langly stretched until he caught the corner of the blanket hanging off his bed. "Were you serious about the nap?"

"I could be. I don't sleep very long." Reid raised his head enough to figure out what was going on. "Hey, watch my jacket!"

Langly popped the blanket and the jacket fell back onto the bed. "I'm not going to drop it on the floor," he muttered, pulling the fluffy blanket over both of them. "This weighs a ton, but it's the most comfortable thing. Artifact of my supposed death. Grew up in a barn, someone else can pay for me to age in comfort."

"The chair, the blanket, the shampoo... you like to live well," Reid observed, tucking the edge of the blanket under his cheek so it wouldn't migrate up over his face.

"Who doesn't?" Langly tried to adjust the blanket to cover his other shoulder but not Reid's face. "Sleep well, Special Agent Extra Virtuous."

Reid snorted and tried to convince himself he was comfortable sleeping with another body pressed against him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> THE END of the fic, but not of the case, because I'm the asshole who decided this needed to be a two-part episode. Am I going to write more of this? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS. ~~I've got a whole other fandom I actually belong in.~~
> 
> Minor edits will be forthcoming as I slowly figure out where I screwed up. ~~continuity requires much more of a grip on the linear progression of time than i have this week~~

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Schrödinger's Anomaly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17459657) by [AntipodeanPixie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntipodeanPixie/pseuds/AntipodeanPixie)




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